once you are known to be a
priest, you are treated differently.
Walk through an airport in clerical
dress: A stranger might pull you aside
and pour out a story of joy, grief, or
repentance; moments later you might
receive from another passerby a
glance of such unfathomable loathing
that it makes you miss a step. despite
the unpleasant aspects, the thing i
love about all this is that my meetings with other people are freighted
with possibility. The energy is there,
at some level, for almost anything to
happen. And, God willing, what happens might be full of grace.

You hear the stories

i love being a priest because i hearabout miracles. Many people thinkmiracles don’t happen, or are veryrare, but that is only because peopletend not to tell each other about theirmiracles. But they’ll tell a priest.i know a woman who wascomforted by an angel and a manwho was visited by the BlessedVirgin Mary. And then there arethe conversion stories. i know afellow who when he was a graduatestudent was teetering on the brinkof faith. one night, while walkingpast the darkened shop windowsof a deserted city street, he offeredup a silent prayer: “God, if you arethere, and if you care, please giveme some kind of sign.” At thatmoment a shabbily dressed man ona bicycle came around the cornerriding in the opposite direction. Ashe passed he looked the student inthe eye and said, “God loves you.”Game, set, and match.i’ve spoken to a Chinese physi-cist who converted from atheism toChristianity because ice floats. Hetold me that every other liquid sinkswhen it freezes. if water sank whenit froze, he assured me, the earthwould be entirely lifeless. We existbecause water behaves in this oddway. That, he said, cannot be a co-incidence, and so he believes in ourCreator.

You get to saythings others don’t

i hear stories like these because
people feel it’s oK to tell a priest
things they would find awkward
to say in public. Happily, there is a
corollary to this instinct: it’s oK for
a priest to say in public things that
would be awkward for other people
to say. As a priest i have a kind of
diplomatic immunity from the social
taboos against talking about God—
or anything else that really matters—
in polite company. When i speak
up i will at worst see an expression
on someone’s face that seems to say,
“oh well, what do you expect? He is,
after all, a priest.” i can speak badly,
or i can speak deftly, but at least i’m
free to have a go.

What i love most about this special priestly license is the freedom it
gives me to speak without irony. Almost invariably, when folks do speak
about God in public, they hedge their
remarks with protective ramparts of
irony. That way no one can be certain
that they really mean what they say,
and if push comes to shove they can
pass it all off as a joke.

i love not joking. i love being
able to speak about God simply and
freely from the heart. i love being a
priest because, years after the event,
people will come up to me and tell
me that something i said changed